5 things you need to know in Australian tech today

Welcome to the final week before a well-earned Christmas break! Check out these tech stories as the countdown begins for Santa:

1. Commonwealth Bank has launched pay-to-mobile for overseas money transfers. This means that an Australian CBA customer now only needs the mobile telephone number of an overseas recipient to send money to them. No bank account or SWIFT codes are required. Read more on the new feature and which countries are the most popular destinations for Australian money.

2. The National Australia Bank sent account details of 60,000 customer to the wrong email. The bank apologised for the mistake, which affects migrant customers who opened NAB accounts from overseas. Read more here.

3. Aussie startup success Canva is taking on US giant Tableau. Startup Daily reports that Canva launched data visualisation features that “bridge the gap between Microsoft and Adobe”, creeping into a market dominated by Tableau.

4. Technology services provider ASG has been sold for $350 million. The AFR tells the story of how a small Western Australian business grew in 20 years to be eventually acquired by Japanese systems integrator NRI – but not without some hurdles early on that could have sunk it all.

5. The tax commissioner has launched a “full review” of all the technology troubles that beset the ATO last week. Chris Jordan labelled the crash of HP hardware as “the worst unplanned system outage in recent memory” as the incident crippled the organisation for two days. Read the rare mea culpa here.